


It Begins and Ends in Morningside

by Jambammer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Humor, Mystery, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:19:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jambammer/pseuds/Jambammer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the town of Morningside, population: 2000.<br/>Except for every thirty some years, when thirty-one people go missing throughout the entire month of May.</p><p>(Will eventually be a rewrite of s6-onwards.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if Morningside is a real town in Montana, but it is in Alberta. I don't know anything about that town either, other than I love the name of it!
> 
> Also, like many fans, I was disappointed by a few things in season 6, so this will be "my" season 6 eventually, set around season 5 currently.

“So fill me in on the details?” Dean’s eyes watched the road, trying to keep them in focus. It was amazing what a fourteen hour driving day did to a person, and not the good sort of amazing either. He blinked and did his best to stifle a yawn.

Beside him, his brother dug around his seat for his flashlight. “Sure, just a sec.” There was a click, and suddenly the interior car wasn’t quite so dark. “Town of Morningside, Montana. Population is roughly two thousand people.”

“Sounds _charming,_ ” he replied dryly.

“Yeah, well it’s not every thirty years or so in May. A person goes missing every day of the month. Sometimes the bodies are recovered, sometimes…”

“They’re never seen again,” Dean surmised with a nod. “You thinking Wendigo?”

Sam shrugged. “It’s possible I guess, there’s enough forest around.”

Sam’s tone made it clear he thought otherwise.“But…?”

“Well, Wendigos are usually more predictable when it comes to their hunting,” Sam replied, leafing through the papers on his lap.

“What, a specific month’s not predictable enough for you?”

“They usually have a set amount of years in between hunts. Twenty years, twenty one years, twenty two years, and so on. This thing… I dunno man, it seems pretty random. One attack was twenty seven years after the previous attack, which had happened thirty two years after the attack before that. Besides, have you ever heard of a Wendigo leaving bodies out in the open?” He looked to his older brother whose expression was answer enough. He shrugged. “Honestly, it could be anything at this point.”

“So whatever it is is snatching thirty one people every thirty some years. My question is why do people still live in this freakin’ town?” Dean wondered aloud.

“That’s the thing, it doesn’t take just townsfolk,” Sam explained. “It takes people from the surrounding area as well.”

“So if you’re out for a midnight stroll in the forest…”

“Or just driving through, yup. You’re in danger. That’s why no one’s really noticed this; if a tourist drives through the town and doesn’t come back, who in the town would notice?” Dean gave a slight nod, admitting this was true. “And a whole new generation has time to grow up during the quiet years. It’s possible no one’s really put this together yet.”

“No one except Bobby,” Dean answered, smirk tugging at his mouth. He sighed and shifted in his seat. “What’re we doin’, Sammy?”

Sam blinked and looked around the car as though it would provide the right answer. “We’re… hunting?”

“That’s not what I mean. We’ve got both angels and demons on our tails and the whole damn world is ending, and we’re out _hunting_ like nothin’s going on?” A bitter laugh touched his last words.

“The angels can’t find us.”

“No, but the demons sure can! What if this is a trap?”

“Pretty elaborate trap that would have been in the making for the past two hundred years at least.” Dean didn’t answer this, but kept his eyes fixated on the road. Sam shook his head. “Look, I know the situation’s bad, and it’s my fault…”

“Sam.”

“No, just let me finish. It’s bad, okay, I know that. But it’s going to get worse. There’s nothing we can do about it, not yet anyways. And we can’t do it unless we can work together. Work together _properly._ This’ll be good for us to work on that, and save a few people before everything hits.” He stared intently at his brother. “What do you say?”

“Yeah, okay,” the elder replied gruffly, and the younger wasn’t sure he meant it. “You’re right,” Dean agreed before clearing his throat. “So,” he changed the subject, “small town in the middle of nowhere. What do you think the chances are of the motel _not_ being crummy?”

Sam laughed. “Not very good, I’d say.”

Dean grunted and nodded. “Yeah, thought as much.”

 

~~~

 

“Lee Williams?” Sam asked with a grin as his brother unlocked the door to their room.

The elder wasn't sure _why_  exactly his brother was so amused by the name, but the younger had been fighting a mocking grin since check in. “What about it?” Dean asked in reply, flicking on the light and surveying the room. Shag carpet, bad wall paper…“Jeeze, this is right out of the 70’s.”

“Small town, motel’s probably not their priority,” Sam replied, following his brother in. “It’s just, that’s the most normal sounding name I think I’ve ever heard you use.”

The elder shrugged. “I needed something to put down, I was in a hurry so I went for generic. Sue me.” He dropped down wearily to the bed. The mattress squealed back. “I think this might be from the 70s yet too.”

Sam gave his bed a wary look.

Dean unlaced his boots, exhaustion catching up with him.  “We’ll start diggin’ first thing. It’s what, the third?”

“Fourth now,” Sam corrected, gesturing to the clock. 2:00AM. “I’ve got the names of the first victim’s family and…”

“Sammy,” Dean cut in, holding up his hand. “Morning.”

Sam glanced down at the papers he held and the bag slung over his shoulder. “Right. Yeah.”

“And we’re stopping for breakfast first.”

A half-hearted smile tugged at Sam’s lips. “Yeah, okay.”

After slipping a gun under his pillow, Dean lay back against the surprisingly soft surface and was fast asleep before Sam had taken his coat off.

 

~~~ 

 

“Right, so who was the first one taken?” Dean asked between bites.

“Clara White,” Sam answered, passing a newspaper clipping across the table to his brother.  “Eighteen years old.” Dean looked down at the picture smiling back; pretty blonde girl. Maybe it made him shallow – hell, he _knew_ it did – but he hated it when they were young and pretty. Just didn’t seem right. “She was headed home from a friend’s house after midnight of April 30th, or…”

“May first,” Dean finished, and Sam nodded. “She looks a bit like Jo.” Then again, lately every blonde girl he saw looked a bit like Jo.

Sam pursed his lips, his eyes distant as he nodded. “Yeah, I thought so too.”

Dean cleared his throat to break the silence that had settled. Not that it was uncomfortable, but it was a reminder. “So what. She just never made it home?”

Sam picked up his coffee mug. “Seems that way. No witnesses.”

“What about traffic cameras?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Dean, we’re in a town with a population of two thousand.”

“Right. No traffic cameras. Great,” he shoved a forkful of sausage into his mouth and shook his head. “Why do these things always happen in the middle of freakin’ nowhere?”

From the counter, the box-redheaded waitress gave him a dirty look. Dean flashed her a quick, hopefully charismatic smile before ducking his head away.

“I think because they’re in the middle of nowhere. If it were somewhere like New York, it’d be a big deal. International media coverage. Where as here,” he cast his eyes around the smoky diner and shrugged. “No one really cares.”

“Right. Who gives a crap about some dingy little hick town?” The people who lived there, apparently. Dean pretended not to notice the looks he was getting as he took a drink of his coffee. “So this girl’s family.”

“She lived with her mother, Amy, couldn’t find anything about extended family, and her father died six years ago,” Sam explained. “Maybe her behavior changed in the last few weeks, or maybe we’ll find something to link her to the other victims.”

“Who’re they?”

Sam pursed his lips. “I don’t know yet. Not townsfolk.”

“Great. Well, gotta start somewhere I guess.”

 

~~~

 

“This place looks nice,” Dean commented, walking up the pathway to the white porch of the house. It was a quaint little building, obviously a few decades old. Vines climbed their way to the roof along the sides, but it somehow held a quiet charm.

“Since when are you interested in real estate?” Sam asked back.

“I’m not!” Dean replied defensively, straightening his tie. “I’m just sayin’, it’s a nice place. This whole town looks like somethin’ out of a painting.”

Sam had to agree with that. Something about the town made him uneasy, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what exactly it was. Instead, he pushed the thought from his mind and pushed the doorbell.

“Mrs. White?” Sam called out after they had waited a moment and were met with silence from inside the home.

“Mrs. White, FBI,” Dean shouted and banged his fist against the door, but again the brothers were met with silence.

Dean reached into his pocket for his lock picks, but his brother grabbed the doorknob and turned it. The door opened without protest.

“Small towns,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “No one locks their doors.”

“They should really start,” Dean replied, pulling out his gun.

“No kidding.” He gestured with his own gun at the table. “She didn’t leave the house. Not willingly.” A women’s purse sat on top, and a quick look in revealed a wallet, and car keys. No woman he’d ever known had gone _anywhere_ without their purse.

A quick scope of the house revealed something much grimmer.

“Are those… claw marks?” Dean asked as his younger brother knelt down by the frame of the back door, studying the markings.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Sam agreed as he traced his fingers around the grooves in the wood, “but they’re not demonic. Dean, I think these were made by human nails.”

“She was dragged out the back door, but damned if she didn’t try to fight it every step of the way.”

Sam looked up at him. “I think we’ve found another victim.”


	2. The Link

 

“House is clean,” Dean reported with a shrug, standing in the doorway of the room his brother was occupied with searching. “No sulfur, nothin’. Whatever this thing is, it’s not demonic.”

“Someone here was afraid of something,” his younger brother mused.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at your feet.”

At first, he didn’t see anything but the white carpet (there was so much white in this house, it was practically blinding) but crouching down, the line of white dust became more apparent. “Salt.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “It lines the entire room.”

“So the daughter knew about what lurks in the dark?” Dean asked, looking up at his brother. “You think she was a hunter?”

“Daughter’s room is down the hall,” the younger replied grimly.

“Well Mom’s room is in the basement,” Dean replied, “so who’s staying here?”

“Good question,” Sam replied, leafing through a journal on the night table. “This belongs to Clara though. She talks about leaving the town behind her and becoming an actress.”

“Any chance she just picked up and left?” Sam shook his head. “Didn’t think so.”

The room had clearly been in use, and recently.  The bed unmade, clothing scattered – women’s clothes, well worn and dirty, not like the ones in the other room that were more suited to a wannabe actress –, a glass of milk that hadn’t yet soured sitting under the bed near a jar of what had to be holy water.  “Whoever it is staying here, I think they _are_ a hunter.”

“It’s May fourth, and people go missing a little after midnight typically.” Dean got to his feet. “Think we might have found a third victim?”

“Maybe,” Sam closed the journal but kept it in his hands. “It doesn’t make sense. No one’s gone missing from the same house before. Not even from the same family. It’s usually people who live alone, or would have the possibility of going off on their own without telling anyone.”

“Like an eighteen year old girl sick of small town life.”

“Exactly.”

 “I’m guessing it wouldn’t take too kindly to a hunter drifting through town.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Sam nodded to the house outside the bedroom window. “We know that someone was taken from here…”

“And they didn’t go quietly.”

“Think the neighbours heard anything?”

Had the attacker been human, and this been a normal kidnapping, he would have said yes, they would have had to be dead to _not_ have heard anything. “Maybe.”

 

~~~

 

“Hey Sam,” Dean said as they walked up the sidewalk. His brother looked over his shoulder. “May the fourth be with you.” Sam looked forward again and rolled his eyes. “Get it? May…”

“I got it. That’s not funny.”

Dean grinned. “It’s a little funny.”

Their conversation was cut short, much to Sam’s relief, by the front door opening as they approached. An elderly woman in her early seventies dusted her hands on the old apron she was wearing. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

The elder cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, Ma’am. We’re with the FBI.” The two held up their fake badges. “I’m Agent Morse, this is my partner Agent Steinhardt. We need to ask you some questions, if that’s all right.”

The woman looked at the two of them worriedly, tucking a strand of white hair behind her ear. The rest of it remained trapped in the bun she wore it in. “Oh my, is this about poor Clara?”

Sam nodded, his voice and eyes oozing enough sympathy to make his brother want to gag. “Yes, we’re looking into her disappearance. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on a few things for us.”

She opened the door fully and waved them in. “Come on inside and I’ll tell you everything I told that reporter yesterday.”

The brothers exchanged looks. “Reporter?” Dean asked, voicing what they were both thinking; _the hunter_.

The woman nodded. “Lovely young woman.”

It was a shot in the dark, but Sam decided to take it. “Did you get her name? We may want to contact her.”

“Let me see… Kim, I believe,” the woman mused to herself, leading the two men into a small living room.  “What was her last name? Mathews… no… Mark?”

“Luke?” Dean asked under his breath, and received an elbow in his ribcage as he and his brother took a seat.

“Martins! That was it,” the woman nodded. “Kim Martins. I’ll just get you gentlemen some lemonade.”

“Oh that’s really … not necessary…” Sam trailed off, noticing the woman had disappeared into another room.

The elder Winchester studied the room and grimaced. “Is everything in this town stuck forty to fifty years behind? Dude, I’ve never seen so much floral print in my life.”

There was a lot of it; the curtains, the cloth on the coffee table, the couch they were sitting on… and none of it was the same pattern. Sam shrugged. “Small town, been here for ages, what do you expect?” Taking the brief moment they were alone as an opportunity, he lowered his voice. “Thoughts on the reporter?”

“The hunter, has to be,” Dean replied, and the younger nodded. “You think _my_ name was generic? Kim Martins. That’s pretty bad.”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be fake,” Sam agreed.

“Do you think she’s still out there?”

The younger sighed. “I hope so.” This seemed suddenly too big for the two of them to handle on their own.

Then again, it was nothing compared to the looming apocalypse.

 

~~~

 

“When she was a little girl, Clara used to play in my garden,” Mrs. Erikson recalled fondly, passing a picture of a muddy child to Dean, who barely glanced at it before passing it to Sam. “I think she grew tired of this place and left. She’d wanted to for some time, she and her mother both.” Her eyes creased in worry. “You think something happened to Amy?”

Dean cleared his throat. “We, uh, we’ve been looking for her but there’s no sign. We wondered if perhaps you’ve heard anything in the past few days.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “Anything strange… or just something you don’t normally hear from their house?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, not a thing.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Erikson, but did you say that Amy had wanted to leave too?” Sam pressed.

“Yes,” she nodded, her eyes distant. “She never really liked it here, you see. Dalton, Clara’s father, was the one who grew up here. Amy only moved for him, and that was just after Clara was born. Since his passing, Amy was always threatening to go back to the city. Which city, I don’t know. She only ever called it ‘the city.’”

“Are you familiar with any other missing persons’ cases?” Dean asked.

“Morningside _is_ in the middle of a forest,” she pointed out with a kind but weary smile. “Plenty of predators living out there. Every now and then, yes, we do have a case of a disappearance. Bears, we think.” She paled. “You don’t think Amy and Clara…”

“No, no,” Sam cut in, reassuring her. “We’re going to investigate their disappearances as closely as we can, but we don’t believe it to be an animal attack.”

Dean couldn’t shake the feeling that the victims would be much better off if it _was_ a bear attack.

 

~~~

 

“Well that was enlightening,” Dean said sarcastically as he finished his keys out of his pocket.

“Actually, it was,” Sam corrected, leaning against the Impala. 

“Oh?” His brother looked intrigued.

“The victims are definitely those who are prone to leaving,” Sam explained. “Clara wanted to leave to become an actress, her mother wanted to go ‘back to the city….”

“Right. What about the hunter?”

The younger shrugged. “Maybe she decided to leave the town to chase down a lead and the whatever it is didn’t like it?”

Dean slid the key into the lock and pulled his door open. “You think it’s trying to stop people from leaving?” He surmised, pushing the lock to open the passenger door.

“Makes sense with the victims so far,” Sam replied, pulling his door open and sliding in. Once his brother was in the car, he continued. “If you’ve got another theory, let’s hear it.”

“Why only in May? And why every thirty some years?” Dean asked aloud, knowing full well neither of them had the answers. “I don’t get it, Sammy. Ghosts – if that’s what we’re dealing with – have patterns. Monsters have patterns. This… this is too random.”

“Do you think… do you think it might _not_ be anything…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Could it be _human_? I mean, the house came back _clean._ No sulfur, no EMF… Nothing.”

Dean shivered at the thought and started the car. “I hope not. I say we start scanning the town for EMF.”

“And then what? Wait for the next victim?”

“No, we hope that the fourth is strong with us,” Dean grinned at his brother, who groaned in response.

“Are you really going to be making _Star Wars_ puns the rest of the day?” Sam asked, sounding as if the very thought gave him pain.

His brother beamed. “Oh yeah.”


End file.
